PERFORMING ANIMALS.
[To THE EDITOR or THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—The result of the Parliamentary inquiry on this subject will be awaited with great interest. Apart from the question of cruelty, it may well be urged, I think, that these elaborate displays on the part of certain untamed and even tame animals are hardly worth the trouble bestowed on them. They are an appeal to mere vulgar curiosity, which is surely provided for to satiety by the superabundant picture-house. I admit, how- ever, that I like to see a horse—as I sometimes do in Dundee— respond to his driver's whistle. To me it seems an unwholesome survival of the elements of the " Roman holiday " that there should be such an institution as a menagerie at all. What a terrible experience for the bounding elk, the fleet zebra, the kingly lion, the tiger " burning bright in the forests of the night," and the freedom-bred host, and more, to be trundled about in a tottering caravan, shut up in a cage where most of them have scarce room to turn, much less to " perform "I During the past summer I unwillingly accompanied a scientific friend to a well-known menagerie which was visiting a Fife town. It was like entering a prison for the blameless. With a long-established horror of such a show, I saw as little as I possibly could; but I saw enough to convince me of the absolute boredom and distress of the majority of the caged creatures. Disgust filled the eye of the monkey, grief spoke loudly from that of a performing tiger. Frankly granting to my scientific friend the unstated plea that he had reasonable excuse there, I saw nobody else amongst the onlookers who had more than
the dullest intelligence to please. Has not the crowd enough with its abominable cinema? The lack of imprisoned animals to gaze at might be made good sufficiently by pictures from a particular source. Without expatiating, I would declare that the menagerie ought to be abolished. A zoological park is per-
haps a " sad necessity."—I am, Sir, &c.1 WILLIAM BAYNE. Radernie, Fifeshire.
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